


Cracked Mirror

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7, Firefly
Genre: AU, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27350566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: After sustaining damage in a space battle, the Liberator is in drydock, and the crew rent a bolthole...on Serenity.
Relationships: Jenna Stannis/Jayne Cobb, Kerr Avon/Inara Serra/Simon Tam, Malcolm Reynolds/Roj Blake, Vila Restal/Kaylee Frye
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Cracked Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> It’s always hard to establish Firefly chronology, but manifestly this happens sometime after “Jaynestown” and “Ariel.”   
> On the B7 side, it’s a (very) Missing Scene between “Project Avalon” and “Breakdown” (which explains why Orac doesn’t try to horn in on the action, and why Tarvin is still a possible source of help). For non-B7 people, the Amagons are Space!Bedouins, and they make a brief appearance in the episode “Bounty.”  
> Blame me and not the characters for the nonsensical nature of the technoneep. Oh, and FWIW I think Vila is wrong about the cigarettes--Jenna probably took an extra dishwashing shift or something.

1\. (Serenity--the bridge)  
“It’s a lot of money,” Simon said. “A lot of money.”

“It’s a lot of to-do and brouhaha, and I got plenty of that already,” Mal said. “You see a sign over there, saying ‘Dangerous Rebel Transport’?”

“Rather defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?” Simon asked. 

“Where’d you find this bunch, anyway?” 

“I was in town, with Kaylee and Jayne, you know, and I ended up at one of those bars, the kind where you go to start fights--“ (Mal glared at Simon) “And, there was this girl there, and she knew someone, and they turned out to be Underground fighters, and well…” Simon looked over shoulder, decided that if there were a surveillance device planted on Serenity’s bridge, he might just as well shout as whisper, because there was no way to add to the fathomless trouble he’d be in. Or, for that matter, if there was any way to add to the fathomless trouble he was in already. “You may have heard the rumors that Liberator was in the battle of Hoevanwatch. And it was, but it sustained serious damage. They want to put it in drydock, for repairs, and, well, some of the crew just need a place to stay for a little while.”

Mal almost whistled but didn’t. “That’s a pity, I’d like to see around Liberator, what with what you hear and all. Couldn’t live up to the do-tell, I suppose. But why’d they want to put themselves into a bucket like this?”

“Peace and quiet. And they’re happy to pay for the privilege. Happy to pay enough to shut you up for a while about how much it costs to fuel up. Probably even enough to put a sparkle in Kaylee’s eyes when you let her buy some of that jing tzhang mei yong duh stuff she says she needs.” 

“Where did I go wrong?” Mal said. “Can’t a man do petty crime peaceful-like, without getting his boat full of preachers and rebels?”

“I’m only trying to help,” Simon said.

“The answer is categorically no. Forget it. I am the sole and only source of all the harebrained ideas around here. I’m not stupid. It’s too dangerous. They ain’t comin’.”

2\. (Serenity--the dining area)  
Kaylee beamed, carrying the parcel in front of her. Something inside clicked and whirred. 

Book looked up. Presumably if there were a bomb in there, Kaylee wouldn’t look so pleased with it. He returned to reading a commentary on the meditative practices of the Desert Fathers of Mevinel.

Kaylee put the parcel down on the table, and took off the cover. “It’s a Gurnivian Reticulated Hamster!” she said, opening the cage door. “His…” she took another look…”Her name is Manuel.” 

“Couldn’t you have spent the extra Platinum, got the Automatic?” Jayne asked. 

“Kaylee, that’s no hamster, that’s a rat,” Book said. 

“It is? Aww, look at her cute little toes,” Kaylee said. She opened the cage door and stuck her hand in. Manuel climbed up her arm, and sat on her shoulder, whiskers twitching, with no intention to move on just for the moment. Kaylee tilted her head in to snuggle up against Manuel.

“Yes, you can tell it’s a rat because the circular segmentation is clearly visible on the hairless tail,” Book said. 

Mal came in and made a beeline for the coffeepot. “Whatcha got there, Kaylee? Does it do tricks?”

“She ain’t doing much of anything right now,” Kaylee said. “She’s….she’s studying her new environment. Getting all the data.”

“He ain’t pissin’ on Kaylee’s shoulder,” Jayne said. “For which may the Lord make us truly thankful, right, Shepherd?”

3\. (Companion’s Guild House, Bellerophon)  
{{They could redecorate less often and lower the subscription}} Inara thought, glancing automatically at the new porphyry paneling and low-slung chandeliers in the lobby. She saw that there was a massage appointment available in an hour, so she had a milk bath and an ion treatment, then had her massage and one thing led to another and then she and Raquel had a light lunch and it was halfway through the afternoon before she checked the Engagements Database. 

Nothing within range of this planet…but as she started to turn away, not sure if she was relieved or disappointed, a private message for her popped up on the screen. It was in Mal’s cipher. “This fellow is with a bunch of people who’ll be staying with me. There’s reasons why he can’t go through the regular Guild security procedure. Far as I know his money’s good and he isn’t Jack the Ripper, but then my judgments about people ain’t always the most accurate.”

Inara watched the holo until it vanished from the system after ten seconds. The enthusiasm with which he looked down the plenty of nose he had to do it with would have been discouraging in a social interaction, but this was business. She rather liked the disposition of the muscles around his mouth. To have gotten that far into his thirties without compressing them further argued a certain devotion to pleasure. She sent Mal a Wave: “All right. Tell him it’s a deal.”

4\. (Serenity--Loading Dock)  
“Well, now, Blake,” Mal said. Blake opened his eyes wide, startled. 

“It ain’t much, but it’s home,” Mal said. “You’ve helped us out with some funds we need, we’ll help you out with a hidey-hole for a while. Make it a short one, though.”

“You needn’t worry. We’re grateful for your help, but we are eager to return to our own ship,” Blake said. 

River darted out from behind a pillar. Simon flinched a little. He turned to see if the strangers agitated her, wondering whether he’d need to sedate her. “All you three have curly hair,” she said. “But the men are big and thick and the thin girl can Talk-Not-Talk and the men can’t.”

{{Quite true}} Cally Sent to her. {{I am a telepath. But I can only speak with my mind, I cannot see what is in the minds of others.}}

“We got folks?” Kaylee asked, sauntering up from the engine room, wiping her greasy palms on the seat of her overalls. “Oh, my lord,” she said. “You’re Blake, ain’t you? Next to the last time there was a new warrant on Simon, there was one on you, too. I didn’t know you ever got over as far as this Sector.”

“We usually don’t,” Blake said, shaking her proffered hand. {{And it’ll be damned hard getting back, now that that bloody fool of a girl got our ship smashed to buggery. If that’s what comes of building coalitions, I’ll play a lone hand from now on, thank you very much.}} 

“That was some fine thing you did on Hoevanwatch. People talk about it, you know, and to think I got to meet Blake! A man from the domes of Earth-that-Was!”

“I don’t want to hear no talk of that,” Mal said.

Blake raised an eyebrow. 

“He’s retired from rebellion,” Shepherd Book said. “Too.” 

“You got to meet Jayne,” Jayne said. “Reckon you’ll get over bein’ snowed with this fella about as fast as you got over bein’ snowed with that.” Jayne--like Inara, a keen professional student of body language--enjoyed the spectacle of Mal’s and Blake’s competing wide-legged masculine stances. {{Gorram if they don’t end up doing the splits, they keep that up.}}

“Oh, you,” Kaylee said. 

“Mr. Blake, you can have Dr. Tam’s cabin, he says he’d like to keep an eye on River--that girl there, she’s his sister--anyway. Miss Cally, you can share with our Kaylee, there, that rhymes, don’t it? 

{{It’s barely even assonant}} Simon refrained from uttering out loud.

“And Mr. Gan, Shepherd Book kindly offered to put you up.” Gan’s gaze flickered back and forth between Book and Zoe. He had never seen people with such dark skin before. It was very striking.

“Jayne, ‘fore you ask, I knew you’d tell me to go get raped by my horse, so you don’t got to share with nobody.”

“A promise is a promise, that’s all,” Jayne said. 

Cally craned her neck. “Where’s Avon?” {{Oh, Thaarn, can’t we go anywhere without mislaying somebody?}}

“He that fella with the broomstick up his ass? He’s bunkin’ in with Inara, if that’s what you mean by mislaying.” Jayne wiped the leer off his face before Mal could come over and do it for him.

“Inara is…a courtesan,” Book said, placatingly, wondering how to decipher the expression on Blake’s face. 

5\. (Inara’s Shuttle)  
Avon glanced around the living area of the shuttle. It was, he supposed, understandable that a mobile knocking shop would stress the Womb theme. He bowed to Inara, kissed her hand, and closed her hand gently around the credit authorization disk. Then he sat down on the bed, removed his boots, and tucked his feet under him as he waited for her to verify the funds availability.

“You understand that this is purely a real estate transaction,” he said. 

“Of course,” Inara said, over her shoulder as she worked the cockpit computer. “What possible emotional significance could a real estate transaction have?”

“I’m tired. I will require peace, quiet, and a retreat from the hearty frontier amusements that doubtless prevail on this floating leprosarium. Although by a small margin I’m too decent to dispossess you from your own bed--you may sleep here if you like, but I’ve been told that I’m not a restful bed partner--I shall not demand any, what shall we say, commercial intimacies.” 

The credit was authorized, as one would expect--whether or not there had been any actual funds to back it up. Inara returned to the living area. She didn’t know whether to feel insulted or glad to combine an unexpected client engagement with an unexpected holiday. “Would you care for some light refreshments?” she asked. {{At least the real estate is good for something.}}

Avon nodded. “Thank you, yes, a cup of tea would be welcome.” 

Inara went to the tiny cooler/cooker/cleaner unit, and filled and plugged in the kettle. There was no milk in the cooler, though. By the time she fetched a jug of milk from the main kitchen, Avon was asleep, half-rolled up in the crimson bedspread. (It had taken a lot of work to satisfy Blake that Avon was assured that he couldn’t repair the damage to Liberator himself then and there.)

Inara brewed a pot of sweet mint tea for herself, and sat in the chair, sipping from an elaborately enameled glass, to examine her quasi-client. He could have been Simon’s--well, not father--she thought. Maybe his disreputable uncle. The resemblance went beyond the dark-and-bright aspect. They were both equally generous with their low opinion of Serenity, and they didn’t half take a lot of words to say it either. They had the same ungracefully upright carriage, and the same forward-inward rotation of their shoulders. 

6\. (Liberator--Flight Deck)  
There wasn’t much to do onboard, and what there was, Jenna was doing it. Vila still found the chilly, darkened flight deck more agreeable than his frigid, dark cabin. Zen didn’t say much (and even less of what he said was reassuring in the least) but at least when he spoke there was a flutter of golden bars of light. And staying put on the flight deck kept Vila out of the pitch-dark corridors, which were the worst of all. 

Jenna and Vila both wore Outside suits, with the helmets off (at Sub-Minimal Life Support Level, the cabin air was still breathable, and anyway they needed to conserve the suits’ oxygen supplies). The suit was warm, or warm-ish, which Vila considered an advantage. But the bloody thing didn’t have flies, which meant you practically had to put your back out every time you went to the loo, Which Vila did, fairly often, in light of the circumstances. 

Vila was fascinated by the change in Jenna. She sprawled in her chair, one boot up on the console. Her eyeliner was smudged, her hair was tangled and none too clean, she hadn’t bothered to put on lipstick, and she was smoking a cigarette. As far as Vila knew, she must have blagged it not only from Avon’s cabin but from his nightstand, because that was the only place he had seen anybody keep any cigarettes. She didn’t offer him one, but then he could perfectly well have nicked some himself if he’d wanted any. 

Jenna wasn’t still there just because she was the pilot, but because there was just a slim chance that Jenna would be welcome back at Dar al-Amago, and that the Amagons would deign to accept exorbitant tribute to allow the Liberator to remain in Amagon airspace long enough for Avon to think of something to speed up the predicted three weeks for Auto-Repair. Vila couldn’t remember how he’d drawn the short straw, although Blake made it sound logical at the time. Jenna had a low opinion of Vila’s martial valor, but she didn’t fancy her chances at all as a seemingly unprotected female. Nor did she want to put Blake at risk--and anyway, they wouldn’t think much of Blake: the hand of friendship was only likely to be extended to professional criminals, not amateurs or fit-up victims. 

As Jenna knew, the only way to deal with the Amagons was from a position of strength. It would take some damn fast talking to turn up with a crippled ship and still appear to be on top of the situation. Well, at Standard by a Half, it would take another day to get within teleport distance of Dar al-Amago. The next time she boiled the kettle to reconstitute some rations, Jenna reminded herself to boil an extra pint of water and carry it to the Wardrobe Room. (She didn’t anticipate the walk down those eerie, empty passageways with any pleasure). There, she could light a thermalume, pick out a new outfit, and wash up and re-style her hair. If the Liberator hadn’t had a Wardrobe Room, but had had velvet curtains, she would have made herself a new dress out of them.

7\. (Serenity--Kitchen)  
“And are you enjoying your accommodations?” Blake asked, between his teeth.

“They are fully on a par with a two-star hotel…on a rural planet,” Avon said solemnly.

“I’m not curious about what you think I’m curious about,” Blake said. “What I want to know is how you’re paying her. I checked Liberator’s records, and the only recent withdrawal I see for you is eleven credits. Eleven credits. That scarcely seems enough, does it?” 

“What was our last stop before we flew to Hoevanwatch?” Avon asked with that didactic air that always gave Blake ideas about impromptu orthodontia.

“Provisioning, on Amberoussa.”

“And I don’t suppose you know the predominant energy source on Amberoussa?”

Blake shook his head, beginning to be sorry he’d asked in the first place.

“Rather outdated nuclear reactors, and not all that well-maintained…shocking how wasteful they are of galithneum catalyst. And it’s always interesting to see the differences in what different societies value. Does that answer your question?”

“Av’n!” Blake said. 

“Ah. Nor have you ever paid much attention to the cabinet hardware in the Service Level subcontrol rooms?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Then you wouldn’t notice that the handles and knobs and so forth have a rather unpleasant greenish tinge and a greasy feel…well, to make a long story short, that’s typical of galithneum alloy steel. So I withdrew those eleven credits from my account, went to the marketplace in Amberoussa, and bought some….replacement hardware, performed the exchange, and went back down and disposed of the galithneum steel ones.”

“You stole my door handles to pay a call girl?”

“Don’t be a fool, Blake. I don’t see how you can describe the handles as ‘stolen’ {{or ‘yours’}} when at all times there has been a full complement of hardware. Admittedly not the same hardware, but that hardly matters when the replacements are at least functionally equal to what they replaced. And at any rate, I had no reason to anticipate making Ms. Serra’s acquaintance. I merely had funds available from the arbitrage transaction. Now, I should return to the shuttle, I’d hate to keep her waiting.” There was no point telling Blake that what was in progress was a calligraphy lesson, far less that her last remark was “For Christ’s sake, KM, it’s a brush, not a shovelfull of manure,” so he didn’t tell him. 

“How much?” Blake couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Twelve-five,” Avon said, and swept out.

Blake gritted his teeth. Avon couldn’t possibly mean that he got only twelve credits, five centicredits for the handles, and twelve hundred and five was possible but far less likely than the next most horrible alternative.

8\. (Inara’s Shuttle/MedBay)  
“It’s nothing,” Avon said. “A slight headache.”

“I think Simon--Dr. Tam, that is--is in the Infirmary,” Inara said. She had spent a couple of hours with Avon reviewing her investment portfolio using various stochastic models, so she was starting to like him a little. “He’s got every kind of pill in the ‘Verse. Come on, I’ll show you.” 

Simon finished putting a weave into Jayne’s knuckles as they entered. It wasn’t really necessary, but Simon didn’t have much else to do. Avon picked up the holochart from the counter. “I can’t imagine this is very useful,” he said. “Three of the interstitial layers are out of phase, and you’ve got…let’s see, three different grayscale protocols, what sort of validity can you have in comparing them?.”

“I was…in a hurry when I took it,” Simon said defensively.

“Well, delaminate Layers 4-7, knock them all back down to .lzv files, clean them up and conform the grayscales, save them out as tar’s and perhaps you’ll have something of diagnostic value.” He opened one of the cabinets, squinted at the label on one of the bottles, and helped himself to a couple of pills.

“My computer doesn’t support .lzv files,” Simon said.

“Of course it does. Just isolate the tariel cells on the motherboard…”

“Tariel cells?” Inara asked. Clients liked you to be interested in their work.

“Of course. How do you think you communicate with the Cortex?” He turned back toward Simon. “Take any two tariel cells--I’d suggest 3 and 14, they usually have the fewest infills--and switch the polarity of the third jumper in the second bank. Probably need a magnifying glass and a small instrument to do it, but I hardly think that would defeat you. In fact, if you have a smaller one of those, with a flattened blade perpendicular to the handles, it would probably do very well.”

“Any of that make any damn sense?” Jayne asked.

“Of course. It was very helpful. And, after all, what could be sexier than a good explanation?” Simon asked, his head tilted a little to one side, a smile with something a little, disquietingly wrong with it, on his lips.

Avon raised one of his eyebrows.

Both of Inara’s eyebrows rose of their own accord.

“Ms. Serra tells me that she has a Diffraction set,” Avon said. “Perhaps later on you can give us a game.”

Jayne coughed.

9\. (Tent of the Princely Family, dar al-Amago)  
“It is but a humble bit of…triflingness,” Jenna said, a little flustered when the catch caught on the velvet box holding the long rope of pearls. “To thank you for speaking to us. Perhaps a present for your dear grandmother.” It would have been insanely stupid to go alone, but bringing Vila along meant that precisely no organic creature was in charge of Liberator. They’d taken a shuttle to dar al-Amago--no use letting them know that they had a goddamn teleport.

“Alas,” Iskander said, reclining on a luxuriant pile of cushions spread out on a soft sheepskin that covered a vibrantly embroidered rug. “Our grandmother is…no longer with us.”

“Ah. Called to the Ancestors, in the fullness of her years?” Jenna said. She’d never liked, or trusted, the old bat, and the feeling had been more than mutual.

“Not precisely. And who is your stout companion, dear Jenna?”

{{Chrissake, you can read a Wanted poster as well as anybody else}} “This is my comrade in arms, Vila Restal.” Vila had been warned to keep his hands in his pockets if he planned to leave with both of them, so his mien was, if anything, even less bellicose than usual. 

“But how delightful! We have heard so much of his exploits, and he is welcome here as a warrior among warriors!”

{{A crook among crooks, you mean. Still, I’ve been in Tarvin’s tent for a full ten minutes and nothing’s gone wrong yet.}} “And my honored friend Tarvin?” she asked, sweeping her cloak aside giving a subtle glimpse of the heavy jeweled dagger thrust into her brocade cummerbund. 

“Not here…oh, do not distress yourself, dear Jenna. He is quite well, it is merely a matter of business.”

Jenna got as far as opening her mouth to say, “Quite. And as for business…” before she thought about where they were. “Thank Heavens that he is well!” she said. 

“The preparations for the feast are not yet completed,” Iskander said, stowing the jewel box inside his robes. “But please, accompany me to a humble hut in the dust of the desert, until we may offer you a morsel of refreshment.” 

For Jenna, it was three hours of boredom and anxiety, and her heart ached for her wounded ship, but Vila was more than happy to be anyplace where it was warm, there were belly-dancers undulating on the tables to plangent lutes (he was disappointed to realize, after half an hour or so, that it was boyflesh under the fluttering veils), and there were platters of melon slices and stuffed dates. 

10\. (Book’s Cabin)  
“A sheepman, eh? Where’s your spread located, and how large is it?” Gan asked his roommate, trying not to stare at the huge dandelion-like puff that sprang out when Book unbound his hair. 

“Oh, no, ‘Shepherd” is a religious title. I’m a preacher of the gospel.” 

Although Book’s tone was professionally kind, Gan couldn’t help the antipathy that swept through him. {{How can anyone still believe that rubbish? How can he drag around a Bible that assumes that one le-se Sun and its planets--in the wrong relationship--are the whole of the ‘Verse? Hundreds of worlds have been colonized, but no one has ever seen an angel. Come to that, millions of bodies have been autopsied--or dissected--or simply murdered--and no one has ever seen a soul. Ah, well. He seems a nice enough fellow, I might as well try to be polite.}}

“And your daughter is lovely! You must be so proud!”

“My…oh, you mean Zoe? No relation, although she is indeed a fine sister. I have no children. I belong to a celibate order. And the descendents of Africa-that-Was have spread to many worlds.” 

Gan was going to ask Book what he was doing on Serenity, but sensed that it wouldn’t be a welcome question. “I’m grateful of the chance to be--well, somewhere quieter than our ship, at least the last time I saw it.”

Book sat down, leaning forward with his clasped hands dangling. “What was it like? Was that your first battle?”

“No, not quite-- Liberator has taken a few knocks in my time there, but nothing like this. My ears haven’t stopped ringing yet, and the smell isn’t out of my nostrils. I don’t know--the scale of a full-sized battle seems to make it all worse.”

“In a hand-to-hand skirmish, at least you can tell what’s happening,” Book said. “Perhaps the worst thing about a battle is the lack of knowledge about the wider outcome.”

“They told me afterwards that we won,” Gan said. “But you can’t explain that to the ones who died, can you? Even those on the winning side. I think that being there was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Not the first bad thing, not by a long chalk, but…”

“Perhaps it would help to talk to someone who’s had similar experiences. Mal and Zoe have been in battles a-plenty.”

“But they volunteered! They wanted to be soldiers!”

“And your motives were financial rather than patriotic? Well, it happens. Then perhaps Jayne could share his experiences with you. He’s a mercenary too.”

“I’m…no, I’m not like Jayne. I’m not what people think I am.”

“Join the club, son,” Book said.

11\. (Inara’s Shuttle)  
“You’re not asleep,” Inara said.

“No,” Avon said, taking the pillow off the back of his head and turning over, then turning to face Inara. 

“But you’re not doing anything else,” she said.

“You’re wearing a flannel nightgown,” he said. “A quaintly charming one, and one that displays your splendid breasts to fine advantage, but nevertheless the garment women have worn from time immemorial to signal lack of interest in erotic activity.”

{{Simon himself couldn’t have used more words for ‘No’ .}} “You’re not wearing anything.”

“I never wear nightclothes,” Avon said. “If the situation is desperate enough to suggest the possibility of immediate flight, I sleep in my clothes. I could be wrong, of course, but I feel safe enough here. You should feel flattered. And yes, before you have a chance to ask, I do take an avocational interest in women.” 

“That’s not what I was going to ask,” Inara fabricated. 

“Oh, all right. One question.” Avon reached out a hand, and (leaving the placket of Inara’s gown buttoned) stroked her breasts, and then, still through the fabric, circled the presumable location of each nipple with his index finger until the locations could be confirmed. 

{{Good}} Inara thought. {{Let’s get the show on the road.}} “What’s so bad about your first name? I’ve heard a lot worse.”

He lay back down, his hands behind his head. “It’s my mother’s birth name. Of course you’ve never met her relatives, but they were horrible.” He closed his eyes and turned on his side, away from her.

Inara, a professional smile on her face, inwardly sputtered. {{Well, of all the…if he expects me to…I’m not getting paid to feed his damned ego. No, come to think of it, I am getting paid to feed his damned ego, that’s the one thing they can all get to swell up, sometimes I wish it’d just blow up like a poisoned toad…}}

After a while, she got up out of bed, wrapped herself in a quilted dressing gown of brocaded silk, took out a flatscreen, and dialed up a book. She put on her reading glasses. {{If he wakes up and doesn’t like my glasses, then be damned to him anyway.}}

12\. (Serenity--Various)  
Blake looked inside the Lounge, disappointed not to find it empty; he thought a bit of privacy would be helpful for Jenna’s call-in. Cally and Book perched on red satin cushions, chanting the syllables that swam toward them from the overhead holoshooter. There had been a third red cushion, but River was engaged in tearing it up, throwing the feathers and chanting something of her own invention.

He wandered into the engine room. Kaylee was stretched out on a rope hammock, reading a magazine. “Oh, excuse me,” Blake said. “I was just looking for somewhere to talk to one of my crew members.”

“Important rebel business?” Kaylee asked, her eyes sparkling.

“Yes, I suppose it could be. One of our crew has some contacts with the Amagon …well, they’d call themselves free traders. We’re hoping we can leave Liberator in drydock, in airspace that they’d protect--for a fee, of course!--long enough for the auto-repair to get things back to a state that Avon can tune up.” 

“Lord, I wish I could have a look at the innards of a ship like that. And I’d be purely honored if I could help.”

“Do you think Captain Reynolds could spare you for a day or so?”

“Hard to tell ‘round here. I mean, sometimes I look around and I haven’t done no work for week, ‘cept for taking my turn cleaning the vaporshower or something. And sometimes if I turn my back for a minute, the whole engine’s humped.”

“If you can be spared, it would be a challenge, one way and another. I’ll ask Avon to attempt civilized behavior around you. But in the meantime, I’m afraid our barque is worse than his bite. It’s all academic, in any event, until I find out if the Amagons will accept.” He calculated quickly what the time would be on dar al-Amago, and triggered the comm.

“How’s the temperature?” Blake inquired of his bracelet.

“Middling,” Jenna said. “They haven’t said no, they took the gift…”

“I should jolly well think they would,” Blake said. “That blasted bauble must be worth a hundred thousand credits.” 

Jenna thought that attitude was a bit mean. After all, it wasn’t as if Blake had gone to the trouble of stealing the Baobei Room contents personally.

“Tarvin’s not here, which as far as I’m concerned is just as well, but…you see, I could use rather more back-up. “

“I think I have just the fellow for you, Jenna. I’ll ask Captain Reynolds if he can spare one of his crew members. Well, another one. He has a splendid mechanic…” Kaylee beamed at him “Who can assist Avon with the repair process. And there’s a large, muscular and menacing type who should be able to take care of that other problem.”

13\. (Serenity--Bridge)  
“Sure, I’ll ask him,” Mal said. “Considering that he ain’t kicked nobody’s ass for near days at a time now, and that camel jockeys is one of the considerable number of sorts of people he don’t much feature, I think he might could say yes.” 

“Thank you,” Blake said. 

{{Blake}} Cally sent, {{Would it not be helpful if River and I were to listen in on the conversation? It can be useful to detect…falsehoods…before they have a chance to take effect.}}

“Ah, thank you, Cally, good idea.” 

“Wash, mind heading out for a small while?” Mal said. “Getting crowded in here. Mr. Blake’s going to wave up the Amagon Free Trader fella, see if he’s going to let ‘em leave their ship there for a piece.”

“Tarvin?” Wash asked. “Didn’t he shoot you once?”

“If I was going to take everyone who did that off my Christmas card list,” Mal said, “I wouldn’t have no friends left. But that’s a point, Blake, better not say where you are, and wrap it up if you can before he can get a fix.” 

Tarvin’s face appeared on the wavescreen, and he and Blake exchanged fulsome compliments. 

“He hates him, but he hasn’t done anything to Blake’s people…yet,” River whispered to Cally, who Sent the thought to Blake. Blake kept up his poker face, or rather his mask of oleaginous diplomacy.

“He says yes, but, well, he WOULD say that, wouldn’t he?” River began the chain again.

“He’s sneaky, but he’s not that smart. Now he’s thinking about that pearl necklace. He thinks that it’d be whimsical in a manly way to let it all go on the turn of a coin. If the necklace is real…”

{{It is}} Blake Sounded and River Read. “Then he’ll keep up his end of the bargain. Anyway, what with the way Hoevanwatch went and all, he thinks maybe the tide is turning. If your side wins, he wants to be able to say he helped. If your side loses, he wants to be able to say that he was just spying on you to be able to tell the Feds later.”

Blake bowed toward the wavescreen. “Thank you, my dear friend. There will be a further payment, in cash, when our ship has been repaired and we leave the airspace and protection you have so hospitably provided.” {{A few days}} he thought. {{That’s as long as this alliance can stretch. Perhaps not that long. But I don’t mind the odds. Avon--well, whatever he’s like he’s got his wits about him, and he’ll give them a fight if only to preserve any other fittings and fixtures that he may have his eye on! I don’t know what sort of account the girl would give of herself--but that’s all right, I think Avon would look after her too. And if need be, Zen can cut and run to protect himself. The AutoRepair, plus their good offices, will probably have progressed fairly far by the time the problem--if any!--aserts itself.}}

Blake headed back to his temporary accommodations to ponder the options. Mal got on the comm. to tell Wash he could have the bridge back. Cally and River, with much giggling, settled down for a few rounds of their favorite diversion, Liars’ Poker. 

14\. (Serenity--Dining Area)  
Wash and Simon finished a game of cribbage. “Hell of a life,” Wash said.

Simon nodded. In his recent experience, almost everyone considered punching Simon in the face a substitute for a formal introduction. But that was really not that bad, compared to the percentage of Mal’s acquaintance who had gut-shot him at one time or another. 

Wash answered the comm. and headed back to the bridge.

Avon walked in, put a flatscreen on the table, and started reading. 

“Spending the weekend with a registered Companion!” Simon said. “That’s…something. And as for Inara herself, well, she’s something.” He craned his neck, but he couldn’t see what was on the flatscreen.

“Do you know,” Avon said, “When I was--much younger” {{about your age}} “I was a believer in the ancient adage that the purchaser of sexual services gets the services for free, and pays for the convenient departure of the erstwhile merchandise. Of course I could seldom afford any level of, shall we say, expertise that would have repaid my time. And now that I can, I find that what excites me, is to be desired.”

“Ah, there you are,” Blake said, detouring to pour himself a cup of tea from the Brown Betty pot that now resided in the kitchen. {{Honestly! It’s bad enough that he’s wallowing in all the fleshpots of Egypt at my expense without trying to pull that right little raver too.}} “I certainly desire you to get suited up--Captain Reynolds will let you have one of his Outside suits and the use of his other shuttle--and go back to Liberator and get the repairs in hand. Kaylee has asked to go along, and I’ve agreed--that young woman has a real feeling for engines, I think she’ll be a tremendous help.”

“All right,” Avon said, staccato. “Presumably, then, the Amagons are receptive.”

“Yes, but of course we should keep our guard up. In fact, the shuttle holds four…so Wash will take you and Kaylee out to the ship. Cobb has agreed to backstop Jenna at dar al-Amago, and Vila will come back here.” 

{{Cobb? Who? Oh, yeah, him.}} “Why not let Book fly the shuttle?” Simon asked. “Then you can play Cannibals and Missionaries.”

The cannibal grinned at him.

15\. (Mal’s Cabin)  
En route to the vaporshower, Mal opened his armoire and took out a clean shirt. He was going to open the underwear drawer and fetch a clean union suit, but he decided against it. He shuffled through the drawer until he found a pair of boxer shorts that wasn’t too worn out and was the same shade of gray all over. He looked for a pair of matching socks that didn’t have any holes but had to settle for intact socks that didn’t match. 

Then he put the clean shirt back into the armoire and put yesterday’s back on. Sitting on the bridge doing nothing wasn’t no fashion parade. And if something did turn out to have to be done, that would be even less of one.

16\. (Serenity--Bridge)  
It was driving Blake mad not to have a mission, or even his own ship to rattle around and do nothing in. Serenity didn’t seem to have a watch schedule, so he couldn’t try to get himself assigned to one, 

“Peace and quiet!” Blake said. “It’s wonderful. I don’t know how much of it I can stand.”

“Want to get your ship fixed up so you can get in some more trouble, eh?” Mal said.

“Trouble of my own making, if I can help it. What’s the saying? That when you save someone’s life you’re responsible for her? That’s what happened with me and Avalon. I was glad enough to be able to help her out of a spot of bother. That blasted girl!” Blake said. “First she drove me mad by sending over a lot of brass hats, ran around saluting each other and making up rosters for things…”

“I’m an army man myself,” Mal said. “Got no quarrel with that. Zoe neither. Only time it’s a problem is based on the quality of what they expect you to salute.” 

Blake was glad he hadn’t said “Regular Army Assholes.”

“Judging by the results, the quality was less than prime. There I was, outnumbered on my own ship, outmanned, and damn nearly outgunned by all the laser-cannon-bearing cruisers the Federation could throw at us. Of course I’d been in combat with Liberator a dozen times, but no one listened to me. And the end result, just counting the air battle alone, not even the ground fighting, was dozens of deaths, hundreds of injuries, loss of a substantial part of Avalon’s fleet, and the worst damage to ¬Liberator that I’ve ever seen. I only pray it’s not irrecoverable.” 

“But you won the battle, didn’t you?”

“In the sense that the Federation failed to make Hoevanwatch a testbed for its latest weapon, yes. Or at least that they backed away this time. But the casualty level--both in human terms and in terms of materiel--was unacceptable, particularly the number of critical injuries.”

“That’s the worst of a battle, ain’t it? Not those who pass on, but those who suffer. Our young doctor is some pretty, neh?” Mal asked casually. Blake shot him an interrogative glance. “Won’t give me the time of day. What’s yours like?”

“Oh, no, we don’t have a doctor,” Blake said. “Fortunately, we have some excellent tissue regenerators, and some of Avalon’s medics were aboard.”

“I just ask myself why you do it, why you keep fighting like that. What’s the percentage in it?”

“There’s no percentage in knuckling under to tyranny,” Blake said. “Because whatever you do, as long as you have a thought of your own you can’t eradicate, or a muscle fiber that can work for them after they’ve eradicated your mind, it won’t be enough for them.”

“Some say that it’s only the ones with no git-up-and-go that are still stuck on Earth-that-Was. Everyone else got up and went, like my folks.”

“Where are you from, Captain Reynolds?” Blake asked, refusing to be provoked.

“You might not have heard of it. A farming moon called Shadow, just one of the C-5 class.”

“Shadow!” Blake said. “Where I come from, that’s not a place, it’s an atrocious drug.”

“When I was little, when I didn’t want to finish my supper, my Mama would say, ‘Clean your plate, now, children in the Domes don’t see meat like that from one end of the year to the next.’ And of course I’d say, they could have it, scrawny bull beef most of the time. Sometimes an Easter ham.”

{{Easter? Oh, yes. The spring festival.}} “Not lamb? I think I read that lamb was once traditional for Easter.”

“Hah! Cattlemen don’t eat no sheep meat. Even when we get a carton of protein that’s supposed to taste like sheep, I trade it off with someone if I can.”

Mal could sense Blake’s palpable anxiety, his longing to be gone--back to his own ship, certainly--but also to leave the room. It was surprising how sentimental Mal felt about the prospect of never again seeing someone he barely knew.

Mal had plenty of both to choose from, and on balance he thought that he minded the things he had been a damn fool not to do more than the damn-fool things he ended up doing, so he decided to take his chance before Blake was gone forever.

“Now, see here, Blake, nobody gave no mind to what those Fed hun dans said about you. I know it isn’t true, except it made me think that if they make that up about a man, it’s because they know of his…sensitivity to the masculine attractions. That’s what I think,” Mal said, sputtering to a halt. 

Blake raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t get fucked,” Mal said. “That’s just the way of it. I’d like to get your cock in my mouth, but not enough to go on my knees for it. I got no airs and graces when it comes to bedroom matters, but ain’t had many complaints neither.”

“Nor have I,” Blake said. “I suppose, then, we could find some areas of mutual interest.”

“Yeah,” Mal said. “Might could.”

17\. (Liberator--Teleport Bay and Flight Deck)  
“Just guessin’ here,” Kaylee said, sweeping her flashlight around the teleport bay. “But I bet it doesn’t usually look like this.”

“_Wo cao_,” Avon said. (An intelligent man can always adapt.) 

“Is that all you can say?” Kaylee said. “I bet all the Chinese you know is swearwords.”

“You have taught me language, and the profit on’t is, I know how to curse.”

“Why’s there {{a bunch of powerful ugly}} jewelry all over the floor?” 

“They’re teleport bracelets,” Avon said. “Must have been knocked out of the rack by one of the plasma bolts. We might as well pick them up, it won’t help the situation if we tread on them.” 

Avon took the torch and took a quick look at the teleport console. It appeared to be intact, and when he peered at the underside of the console, the Status lights were all on, although all manner of loose things seemed to have landed on or around the teleport. 

“Let’s have a look at the Flight Deck,” he said. “Come through here.” He took Kaylee’s hand to lead her, which made her feel better about the whole big nasty echoing experience even though the padded gloves made their hands clumsy. 

Not without some trepidation, Avon took off the helmet of his Outside suit (unsure of whether the helmet would distort his voice pattern). The air seemed tolerable--if anything, a little better than Vila had complained about, but then Avon hadn’t paid much attention to the complaints. “Hullo, Zen, it’s I,” he said. 

{{Huh}} Kaylee thought. {{Him ‘n Simon’d say that, rest of the world would say ‘It’s me,’ so I suppose whoever he’s talking to is gonna recognize him.}} Kaylee caught her breath within the helmet as Zen’s bars of light throbbed and Zen said, “Welcome back. The situation, I’m afraid, is not unreservedly positive.” 

“Let’s not frighten the young lady. Is it unreservedly negative? For instance, need we wear these ridiculous helmets?”

“Life support is AutoRestored to 65% of normal, 45% of capacity,” Zen said. “I have cut off the heating elements in the absence of life forms lacking thermal homeostasis. Do you wish it restored?”

“Flight Deck, galley, one sanitary facility, Teleport Bay, and…Control Room One,” Avon said. “For now. As we proceed, we’ll increase the comfort level of the places where we’re working. Could we get the lights up a bit?”

“In the absence of photon-dependent life forms…”

“Yes, yes, very well, keep your hair on. That wasn’t intended as a criticism, just an honest inquiry. And open up one lock on the gun cabinet, let’s issue Miss Frye with a handgun.”

“Catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” Kaylee muttered as the lights increased to half their normal levels, wondering if there was a man behind that screen. Or maybe Mal was righter than he knew, and there were terrifying space monkeys to worry about.

“What? Oh, you mean that thing? It’s a tool, nothing more.”

“If it can talk to you--and if it’s talkin’ back it ain’t just programming--then it has to be at least partly of a person.”

“Miss Frye, you can’t make up for your anger at people being treated like tools by treating tools as people.”

18\. (Mal’s Cabin)  
Mal lowered the volume level on the comm., he’d still be able to hear it and respond to any sort of true emergency, but he hoped Blake wouldn’t be distracted by any mutter of chatter that idly came across. 

Blake sat down on the bed. Across the room, Mal lounged against the wall and smiled at him. Blake liked the confidence radiating from Mal, and liked his sturdy, rumpled, Shetland-pony looks, his cockatoo crest of hair, and his intelligent light eyes. 

Mal dropped one of the braces holding up what Blake had not failed to notice with approval were tight white canvas trousers. His smile narrowed and tilted to a smirk. In Mal’s experience, the spectators usually reacted to this stage of developments with pleased surprise. 

Blake leaned forward, his eyes avid. Mal dropped the other brace and halfway-unbuttoned his shirt. Blake leaned further forward. Mal undid two of the fly buttons, pulled out his shirt, and unbuttoned that too.

Blake reminded himself to stop chewing on his index finger.

Mal’s smile tilted to a crooked grin as the shirt came off. Blake was glad his finger was out of the danger zone, because he might have crunched it injuriously at the enticing vista of a trimly muscled chest (smooth like his own), beautifully toned arms, and a good but not ostentatious set of abs. 

Mal posed for a moment, the outline of his cock bulging through the half-buttoned fly, then bent to remove his boots and shuck down his pants and underpants.

Blake couldn’t read the tattoo but he couldn’t wait to lick it. Although he didn’t think there was anything cold about Mal (cool, though, in the sense of reserved and judicious) he thought Mal looked like a big, trim, beautifully sculpted ice floe, with a fine dazzle all over the pale smooth surface. There wasn’t a damn thing wrong with the way Mal looked with his clothes on, but naked, he was fucking gorgeous. And an arse like a couple of Ice Planets--even immobile, it was a strut. Blake hoped that his friend’s inflexible principles were amenable to at least some short-range modification.

“All right,” Mal said. “I got my cards on the table. Ante up.” 

Blake quickly stripped off his tunic, raised himself off the bed just enough to get his trousers and pants upside-down past his boots (the noose of cloth pulled his boots away as well). He left his shirt on for the time being and slid under the sheet.

In some cases, it turned out he was cushioning a shock, but usually he was glad to be able to deliver some very good news indeed.

Mal sat down on the edge of his bed. Blake scooted toward the wall to give him some room. “Huh!” Mal said, peeking under the sheet. He took a moment to get over being flabbergasted and then grinned.

19\. (dar al-Amago, Compound of the Honored Guests)

Wash signed a lot of papers, and Jayne got off the shuttle and was welcomed and served a lot of damn soda-pop that he didn’t drink and had his ears assaulted with a lot of wail-y things with strings and thumpy things that probably used to be covering up the sheep they served him toasted on little pointy sticks. No one shot him, which went in the plus column, but he didn’t get to hit anyone, carry the nothin’. It took a few hours of suchlike male bonding before he got a minute alone to talk to the blonde tasty.

“Hile, Miss Jenna,” Jayne said. “How much of your body do you want me to guard anyhow?”

“Oh, about as much of it as you can do vertically and with your trousers fastened,” she said. 

“Bad idea,” Jayne said. “You know and I know that one of these characters here is gonna creep into your bed tonight, and the only way you can get outta that without getting’ them all offended-like is if you ain’t there or we’re both in it together. Which is just fine because then we both get somethin’ we want out of the deal.”

“I could bar my door,” Jenna said. 

“Yeah, sure, but my way’s more fun.”

“I’m working.”

“Don’t you bunch combine business with pleasure? We always have to, in light of how much we either don’t get paid or some cocksucker takes the money away after.”

“For all you know, I have a permanent and exclusive commitment to do just that.”

“Okay, judgin’ by all the very significant Looks, your Captain’s bunkin’ in with my Captain. If that computer man of yours ain’t givin’ Simon a Good Explanation right about now, I’ll gen houzi bi diou shi. Anyone can see that dude from your ship ain’t no man for you. No more’n Wash would be if it wasn’t for Zoe to grow him a backbone and kill him if he tries to use any other bone. So that pretty much leaves you’n’me if you want to get your ashes hauled. Now, take them titties of yours. That’s a fine set you got there, well, you know that better’n me, you’ve had ‘em for thirty-some years…”

“Ah, another refugee from the Diplomatic Corps,” Jenna said. “You have to subtract a dozen or so years before they grew, you know.”

“Alls I’m sayin’, is you don’t get nobody to appreciate ‘em enough. Could be wrong of course but I bet you’re a girl who sometimes likes to do something on the wild side. Long as you can just go your way and no get-backs. Well, I’m strong and healthy and I purely love to eat pussy and I got a paper sayin’ I don’t got no Social Diseases. “

“And I’ve got a paper saying that my name is Monica Nicolaievna and I come from Sihnon,” Jenna said. 

“Huh!” Jayne said. “Well, mine’s true.” 

Under what had passed for normal circumstances since Jenna’s conviction and sentence to Cygnus Alpha, and when she was in what passed for her home, the proposition would have been laughable enough to be laughed out of court. But then and there, it seemed---almost reasonable. Although she gave no credence to Jayne’s implication about the reason for her lack of progress with Blake, she had to concede the stark fact. 

It had taken her longer than it took Jayne to entirely rule out Vila, but eventually she classified him as one who, given an inch, would take an ell. And, even if there had been anything about Avon she liked (in her view, he was the sort who gave XXTreme Capitalism a bad name) he lacked all of the characteristics she found attractive in men (for instance, “large,” “rumpled” and “exclusively heterosexual.”) All of these factors, in conjunction with prolonged deprivation and Tarvin’s scheduled return the next day (probably expecting a rerun for old time’s sake), conduced in favor of a midnight assignation.

Jayne appeared, right on time, beaming, his chin balanced on top of a pile of cushions.

“What’re those for?” Jenna asked.

“Well, in my line of work, I need to keep my personal gun handy, prolly you do the same. You put it under the pillow, the pillow gets all lumpy, so’s we need some extras for that. And this big cushion thing is to put under your ass for when we get up to the deep dickin’ part of the evening’s entertainment. Although that’s more for your fat girls, a slim girl with a nice construction like you got on you, I can lay down on my back and sort of drop you down on my cock, then you can slide around on it from there.” 

20\. (Liberator--Subcontrol IV)

“Man, you’re humped hard on this pleismophototronic sensor bank here,” Kaylee said. She sat on the floor, a laser probe in one hand and a banana sandwich in the other. She took a bite out of the sandwich and chewed genteelly. The handgun was within easy reach.

“I know,” Avon said. “I mean, the fabricator would only take about three hours to cast the replacement parts, but there was very substantial wiring failure, and I’m sure at least fifteen percent of the chipset is burnt out.”

“You do your own fab?” Kaylee asked, putting the remnants of the sandwich down on a plate and batting at a smear of grease on her cheek. “Wish I could, seems like bout the only time we got money to buy what we need, we’re out in the boondazzle where there’s nothing to buy except maybe carved whale tusks or something.” 

“You could take a middle route,” Avon said. “When you have some downtime on the ship, run a 3D profile of the components--the critical ones anyway--and the sub-assemblages within each. Then in case of mechanical damage, you can re-scan the component and fabricate only the defective portion.”

“CADCAM!” she said. “That’s school stuff! All I know is how an engine’s supposed to look, and then I listen to it tell me what it needs.”

“Well, by the less occult means of visual inspection, this board’s fried,” Avon said, pulling it away and throwing it into the corner of the room. “Mind hooking up this replacement while I run some diagnostics on the amplifier for the aftside sensors?”

Kaylee ran in the new board and checked it against her palmscreen computer. 

“So, what do you think of us?” Kaylee asked. 

“I haven’t formed much of an impression,” Avon said, unwilling to open that can of worms when there were so many of a technical nature awaiting his attention. He was acutely aware of the dangers of remaining in Amagon airspace, ranging from betrayal to meteor storm with many ugly options in between, and he wanted to get the ship back into operation and get the hell out of there.

“Saw you talking to Simon,” Kaylee said, her eyes sparkling. “You like him, don’t you? He’s the nicest one we got.” {{Well, maybe except for the Captain. And Inara. And, aw, Zoe and Wash’re nice too. Jayne probably thinks he’s nice, he just ain’t good at it.}}

“He’s young,” Avon said. “Taken all by itself, that would be unforgiveable. And he’s succeeded, where I failed.” {{There was someone he owed protection to, and he protected her. Though I wonder if it would have been better for Anna to be mad, after what they did to her, than dead. But she was tougher than that girl, God save her.}}

“Yeah?” Kaylee said. “I didn’t know you wanted to be a doctor. So did my brother Thurloe, but he didn’t either. Sells farm equipment. He doesn’t hold much with politics, though, he didn’t join up to be a fighter for the Independents like the way you did.” 

{{Is that what she thinks? Well, good. I’m certainly not going to furnish her with any details.}}

“Why’d you get Zen to give me the funny gun?”

“You can never tell with Amagons--with anyone, really. We think we’ve bought their loyalty, but we can’t be certain. So it may be necessary to repel a boarding party--nothing like the recent events, of course. My apologies in advance should that happen.”

“I been places where folks were trying to kill each other,” Kaylee said. “Got shot up pretty bad, once, myself. But I never been, you know, where it was an official battle, with armies and a name and everything.”

“My dear, the noise! And the people! And all of them evidently trying to die at once. Still, I suppose it was worth it. If we hadn’t been there, then more of Avalon’s people would have died. And we captured the Federation flagship. Some of Avalon’s--specialists--debriefed the commander, and I inherited a copy of the plans. It seems that they have a new tactic: seeding a planet with bombs that can kill off the populace and leave the buildings standing.”

“Man Jesus!” Kaylee said. 

“But in the meantime, they didn’t mind rounding up a good deal of conventional weaponry. And lobbing it at us. And, despite the widespread corruption in government contracting, some of it landed. Hence the redecoration. The Autorepair stressed out and cut out. It’s back on now, but it’ll be faster to go mechanical and swap in new components for some of these critical systems than to wait for AR. In some cases, the later model has greater functionality anyway. Pass me the #16 probe, would you, xiao mei mei?”

“Number 16?” she said. “Gonna make a mighty big hole there. How’s about the 14, fit up the periscope sensor and keyhole it?”

“Steady the sensor, hold the torch, manipulate the probe? I’ve only got two hands.”

“Well, I got two,” she said. “And a flashlight.”

“All right. Clamp on the sensor, then, and give me the hand drill.”

Kaylee handed them over. “Y’know,” she said, “This is nice. It makes me feel good. I mean, a smart man like you, and you’n’me have the same job.”

“Well, hooray for us,” Avon said, deciding that his attitude toward Kaylee wasn’t thawing after all.

“Hmmph!” Kaylee said.

Fourteen hours later, Avon decided that they’d done about all they could in the way of repairs, and Zen confirmed that the ship was habitable and operational, albeit low on fuel and unlikely to exceed Sx6 without something dropping off. 

Avon thanked Kaylee by allowing her a teleport ride as a treat.

Kaylee didn’t think it was the best orgasm she’d ever had, but it was the most fun she ever had just going from one place to another without doing anything in between.

21\. (Inara’s Shuttle)  
Avon started out by spotting Inara 175 points. (After the shuttle run from dar al-Amago, Avon went right back to the shuttle; Kaylee went back to the ship.) Simon thought that was grossly excessive. He knew that Companion training included all sorts of board games. Anyway, he’d seen Inara playing Diffraction with River. She played quite well, though not necessarily at a Ranked level. 

“Evens,” Avon said graciously, and Simon pondered whether to accept. His own Level 1 ranking had been canceled when he became persona non grata, of course. 

Inara finished setting up the Diffraction boards and put the ice bucket, some glasses, and some little bottles of mineral water on a tray. “Don’t worry,” she said. “River likes Cally, they’ll be fine together.” In an ostentatious show of not bothering, Inara wore a house outfit, not a bit like she’d wear with an ordinary client: a salwar kamiz in soft, faded yellow cotton, block-printed with mulberries and green leaves. Her hair was merely scooped into a clip with no attempt at hairdressing. She did wear her best sandals, their straps covered with soft tan and dove-gray polished riverstones, but that was because they were new and she liked to stretch her feet out and look at them.

“For you, Inara,” Avon said, producing an unopened bottle of brouillika liqueur. “And for you, Simon,” he said, handing over a fresh bottle of scotch. “I bought them from Wash. He said he’s been saving them, but after all, we shan’t be together again, and he can always buy some more the next time you’re in civilization.”

Inara thought that Avon was, in all probability, telling the truth. The liqueur was the kind of thing Wash was always buying for Zoe and that she wouldn’t be caught dead in a ditch with. 

“Oh?” Simon said, half-joking but sounding ninety percent sulky. “Are you trying to get me too drunk to play?”

“Killing two surds with one Beaune? No, of course not. Just a friendly game,” Avon said. He dropped a couple of ice cubes into a glass and poured himself a drink from a third, open bottle.

Inara wasn’t too sure. She scarcely knew Vila, of course, so she could only speculate why, that afternoon, Avon had murmured “A pity that Vila isn’t here” as he poured out the contents of a half-full square bottle with a black and white label and decanted a pot of mint tea into it. 

Both Inara and Simon gazed at the bottle of scotch. The seal appeared to be intact, and at about the same time (Simon was quicker-thinking and also had more at stake) they decided that although they wouldn’t cash Avon’s personal check for more than about fifty credits, they didn’t think he’d put a Mickey Finn in the drinks during a friendly game of…Diffraction…or whatever.

The liqueur was too sweet to be consumed in more than minuscule quantities, so Inara expected to remain reasonably sober. She’d seen the inroads Simon could make into a supply of very bad beer, so she could only imagine what he’d do to a bottle of very good Scotch. 

22\. (Serenity--Dining Area/Kitchen)  
Vila looked around the dining area. It was…cozy. They didn’t have anything like it on the Liberator. The crew here didn’t seem to have any assigned watches, they just sort of sloped around doing things, so they probably didn’t have to work shifts either. 

Vila looked down at his plate. The creamy fawn color suggested vat-grown alginate steak. The aroma suggested that an amateur cook had gone way overboard with the powdered rosemary. Vila grinned. He’d made that mistake himself. 

Book broke a piece of bread off the loaf and passed the basket to Blake. River sat across the table from him, next to Cally, occasionally Sharing a Joke in Telepath. 

Kaylee was on River’s other side. River painstakingly shredded off a bit of steak with her chopsticks, and held it up in her hand.

Vila saw something pale flash out of Kaylee’s lap and into River’s. 

Blake flinched. 

“Did Manuel bother you? Sorry, she wouldn’t hurt nobody.” At the sound of her name, Manuel hopped on to the table and faced Blake, twitching her whiskers interrogatively.

Blake fought down the revulsion he felt. “No, I’m the one who should apologize. It’s just that when I was in prison, I saw rather more rats than I cared for.”

“Well, so what?” Vila said. “Ever since then, we’ve seen rather more of Avon than we cared for, and it didn’t hurt us. Much. Where is he, anyway?”

“Long story,” Mal said. 

“I like stories,” Vila said.

“You wouldn’t like this one,” Blake said. “And that’s an order.”

“Speaking of which, Kaylee, new rule around here: positively no rats at the dinner table,” Mal said. At the sight of Kaylee’s wide eyes, he said, “Starting with tomorrow.” 

They finished dinner, and the crew and visitors began to drift away from the table. Kaylee started to clear the dishes off the table. Behind her, Zoe started up the heater on the vaporwasher. “I’ll help you with that,” Vila said.

Blake raised an eyebrow at the thought of Vila volunteering, but then took another look at Kaylee and smiled. 

“Gee, Zoe,” Kaylee said. “I think we can manage just fine by ourselves.” 

“Suits me,” Zoe said. Cooking was bad enough, but at least you got something to show for that. Cleaning up was just scraping slime off stuff.

“Towel!” Kaylee barked. Vila didn’t mind complying, but there was something odd in her tone of voice. “Oh….” She said. “Not you… Uh, we’re a little light on fuel so we’re doing conservation settings, we don’t run the dryer ‘tachment, we wipe the dishes.”

Manuel sort of wadded up a dishtowel with her front paws, and used her nose to push the towel toward Kaylee.

“That the only trick she can do,” Kaylee said. “Actually, I don’ t know if Simon would be too happy to know he was eating off dishes that was wiped with a towel handled--pawdled--by a rat.”

“Then let’s not tell him, eh?” Vila said. “Is Manuel a boy or a girl rat?”

“Shoo, that’s obvious, even if you don’t pop the hood and look underneath. Just get to the south side of a northbound rat and you can see that big ol’ unit if it’s a he that’s got one.”

Vila sidled closer. “Would it help my case if I told you I was hung like a rat?”

Kaylee giggled. “Well, y’know, it’s more about shooting out all those little sperms and makin’ lots of baby rats than about making the girl rats cry.”

Vila sidled closer still. “Now, I bet it really would help my case if I told you I don’t want to make girls cry, I want to put a big smile on their pretty faces.” {{And be out of town before the Paternity Order issues.}}

23\. (Serenity--Lounge Area)  
Wash brought Jenna and Jayne back from dar al-Amago.

When Jenna and Inara met, there was complete mutuality of feeling. It was hate at first sight. But they did find it was a useful encounter. Jenna, in the two hours between setting foot on Serenity and teleporting back to Liberator, found an immediate buyer for her gifts from Iskander--a load of gaudy Amagon trash that she wouldn’t be caught dead in a ditch in. 

Inara thought there was a sort of poetry in returning some of Avon’s credits to the Liberator. And damn few of them, for the amount of beautiful jewelry and stunning embroidered robes.

24\. (Kaylee’s Cabin)

Kaylee’s short dress had sort of a bib top, like overalls, but more perforated. It looked really interesting with nothing under it but Kaylee, Commando, and it was open enough so even someone lacking special skills could get a hand inside to caress her breasts, so they left it on.

Kaylee had her own condoms, always, kept ‘em in a carved wooden box that Inara had given her (refilled a few times since then, though), and it didn’t take long before she was ready to pop one out of its package and prove that she wasn’t lying when she boasted she could put ‘em on no-hands. 

Riding on top of Vila, she could lean all the way back, and when she came for the first time she laughed, not in a mean way but just out of pure pleasure, stuttering with giggles everywhere. And she was happily at home within her young body, and she could get her legs into all kinds of interesting places.

“I can walk on my hands like a wheelbarrow, y’know,” she said. “With a little cooperation. If you see what I mean.”

And Vila saw, of course. Even in the middle of having a helluva time he felt a little sad. There’d been many towns and moons and planets where he’d solemnly explained to pretty, sweet young girls that sex could be just for fun, a delightful gift shared by the men and women carried like chaff on the winds of life.

This time, he didn’t just think he was preaching to the choir, he was preaching to the girl who wrote the prayerbook. And he didn’t like to think that he was mean enough to want to leave behind a trail of sobbing girls. But still and all, he thought there was something foreign to the very nature of girls themselves, knowing that this time she’d forget his name before he so much as had a chance to forget hers.

25\. (Inara’s Shuttle)  
“Challenge!” Simon said. “That can’t be how you spell that…that,” as Avon keyed in the last letter of “soliloquy,” landing on a space that would triple the turn-score if he solved a laughably simple quadratic equation. 

“Simon!” Inara said. A few bits of bad luck with the dice and a nasty series of number-theory questions had driven his bank way down. He’d be in deficit if the challenge was unsuccessful, as she knew it would be. (Companion training involved quite a lot of overt acting.)

“Challenge!” Simon repeated. {{Damned if I’m going to back off, and I’m certainly not going to let a woman--especially not that woman--haul my ashes out of the fire--pull my chestnuts out of the fire--is that right either?--fade the heat for me.}}

Avon shrugged, Inara pressed the “challenge” key, which uttered a loud, annoying, but mercifully brief klaxon. 

“I’ll go get some more money,” Simon said, trying to unfold his legs. 

“I rather like that waistcoat you’re wearing,” Avon said. “I’d accept that in barter.”

“It wouldn’t fit you,” Simon blurted.

“Let’s see, shall we?” And after the last button on the midnight-blue brocade parted, Simon closed his eyes and the pillow reared up to smack the back of his head. 

“Ahhh,” Inara said, looking at the pure line of his throat and the whiteness of his hands, clutching the bedspread.

“I’d be obliged to you if you refrain from any commercial demonstrations,” Avon said.

A momentary flash of fury detonated in Inara’s eyes, but was suppressed by long practice. {{Oh, I could just spit tin tacks! But I suppose, since he’s paid for anything reasonably resembling sex, then he’s paid for silence if he wants it. And even he doesn’t have the nerve to demand an honest response, so it’s just money for nothing if he wants to not get a dishonest one.}}

Inara unbuttoned the top button of Simon’s shirt. She slipped her hand inside the band collar. With her other hand, she unclasped the clip that held her chignon. Hair spilled down in ringlets, and Avon sighed. 

{{Oh, we’ll hear you scream all right}} Inara thought. {{For all you think you’re too high and mighty. Between the two of us, we’ll make you scream.}}

{{I’m not going to open my eyes}} Simon thought. {{They can’t make me.}} For a moment he wondered into which mouth two of his fingers had disappeared, and which one of them had stripped off his socks and was licking the sole of his foot. Inara and Avon both smelled like sandalwood. He thought that was hardly fair. {{I like the atmosphere, it’s delightfully drunk in here, so I’m just going to drift along with it. And that’s what I always do, isn’t it? Except for grabbing River and running away. I was supposed to be a doctor, so I trotted off to the MedAcad. And then I became a surgeon, so I never had to deal with any people who were actually conscious, just stand on the conveyor belt, like working in a factory, really. They shoot the patients in spread out against the sky, and I stitch them, yes, it must be a garment factory and…}}

And a breath in his ear and then a tongue licking his ear and teeth brushing against his neck, just there and then closing in a bite. One and then the other of his shirtsleeves rolled up, someone kneading the fingers of his left hand, someone’s face buried in the crook of his right elbow. {{Of course, I should have realized that I’m in here halfway between a professional student of anatomy and a good amateur, well in the sense of knowing where to put the laser probe to get a question answered…}} 

Avon opened the second button on Simon’s shirt, and Inara unbuttoned the third…  
{{A grossly unremarkable well-nourished white shirt was dissected}} Simon thought. {{Weighing…well, how much does a shirt weigh anyhow? A hundred and ten grams?}}

And then a moment when two right hands were caressing him and two left hands were frankly clutching on to parts of him for balance, because (Simon opened his eyes a fraction) a lot of dark hair was kissing, the two bodies bridged over his, until the whole configuration dissolved and they all sprawled over the bed and reassembled. He reached forward and clasped one of the bodies surrounding him. He felt the firm soft weight of full breasts beneath coarse cotton against his chest, so it must have been Inara on the East-West heading, leaving only one candidate for the hard cock pressing against his thigh. {{That’s valuable}} he thought {{establishing the orientation of everything is a crucial first step in cartography}}.

26\. (Liberator and Serenity--various)  
Gan joined Jenna on Liberator, to help her run a full set of operations-oriented systems checks. 

Back on Serenity, Simon was holed up in the medbay, urgently pushing fluids and self-medicating for alcohol toxicity. After the first time River told him it was his own damn fault, she took a look at his face and scampered off.

Jayne was in his bunk. 

There could probably have been more than one explanation of why the wall between Kaylee’s cabin and the corridor was rattling. 

Zoe didn’t think it was worth alerting Wash to it as a possible sign of ship malfunction. 

Inara hoped that Avon would have enough time to finish explaining to her how to break the encryption on the per diem Compagnonnage Tax Report and Return. 

Mal sat in one of the chairs at the dining table. Blake perched on the table, with one of Mal’s hands clasped in both of his. {{Ships that pass in the night…}} Mal thought. {{It’s a little wistful-like. But comfortable. Glad to have had the company.}}

Blake detached his right hand as his bracelet crackled. “Is everything all right, Jenna?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re shiny.”

“Three cheers for Miss Kaylee, then. And I suppose Avon does good work sometimes.”

“Ask the doctor,” Jenna said.

Gan asked if they were ready for teleport.

Blake said they were.  
###


End file.
